Today In History

[marquis2]

1606 - England adopted the original Union Jack as its flag.

Wrong on all counts.It was called the Union Flag and only when flown from naval jackstaff was it called the Union Jack.
But it wasn't an English flag , that's the St.George's Cross.It was the British flag newly adopted to combine the flags of England and Scotland.Technically Scotland took over England in 1601 not the other way round.England and Scotland kept their respective flags for certain occasions and do so to this day.
Wales was legally a part of England until 1993 so wasn't considered separately.

 

[minidog]

1598 - King Henry IV of France signed the Edict of Nantes which granted political rights to French Protestant Huguenots.

1759 - The French defeated the European allies in Battle of Bergen.

1775 - Lord North extended the New England Restraining Act to South, Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act prohibited trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.

1782 - Washington, NC, was incorporated as the first town to be named for George Washington.

1796 - The first known elephant to arrive in the United States from Bengal, India.

1808 - William "Juda" Henry Lane perfected the tap dance.

1829 - The English Parliament granted freedom of religion to Catholics.

1849 - The Hungarian Republic was proclaimed.

1861 - After 34 hours of bombardment, the Union-held Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederates.

1870 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in New York City.

1916 - The first hybrid, seed corn was purchased for 15-cents a bushel by Samuel Ramsay.

1919 - British forces killed hundreds of Indian nationalists in the Amritsar Massacre.

1933 - The first flight over Mount Everest was completed by Lord Clydesdale.

1941 - German troops captured Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial.

1945 - Vienna fell to Soviet troops.

1949 - Philip S. Hench and associates announced that cortizone was an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

1954 - Hank Aaron debuted with the Milwaukee Braves.

1959 - A Vatican edict prohibited Roman Catholics from voting for Communists.

1960 - The first navigational satellite was launched into Earth's orbit.

1961 - The U.N. General Assembly condemned South Africa due to apartheid.

1962 - In the U.S., major steel companies rescinded announced price increases. The John F. Kennedy administration had been applying pressure against the price increases.

1963 - Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds got his first hit in the major leagues.

1964 - Sidney Poitier became the first black to win an Oscar for best actor. It was for his role in the movie "Lilies of the Field."

1970 - An oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13, preventing a planned moon landing.

1972 - The first strike in the history of major league baseball ended. Players had walked off the field 13 days earlier.

1976 - The U.S. Federal Reserve introduced $2 bicentennial notes.

1979 - The world's longest doubles ping-pong match ended after 101 hours.

1981 - Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke received a Pulitzer Prize for her feature about an 8-year-old heroin addict named "Jimmy." Cooke relinquished the prize two days later after admitting she had fabricated the story.

1984 - U.S. President Reagan sent emergency military aid to El Salvador without congressional approval.

1984 - Christopher Walker was killed in a fight with police in New Hampshire. Walker was wanted as a suspect in the kidnappings of 11 young women in several states.

1990 - The Soviet Union accepted responsibility for the World War II murders of thousands of imprisoned Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. The Soviets had previously blamed the massacre on the Nazis.

1997 - Tiger Woods became the youngest person to win the Masters Tournament at the age of 21. He also set a record when he finished at 18 under par.

1998 - NationsBank and BankAmerica announced a $62.5 billion merger, creating the country's first coast-to-coast bank.

1998 - Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, gave natural birth to a healthy baby lamb.

1999 - Jack Kervorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, MI, to 10 to 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk. Youk's assisted suicide was videotaped and shown on "60 Minutes" in 1998.

2000 - Richard Gordon was charged with trying to extort $250,000 from Louie Anderson in exchange for not telling the tabloid media about Anderson once asking him for sex. Gordon was held without bail pending a court hearing.

2000 - It was announced that 69 people had died when the Arlahada, a Philippine ferry, capsized. 70 people were rescued.

2002 - Twenty-five Hindus were killed and about 30 were wounded when grenades were thrown by suspected Islamic guerrillas near Jammu-Kashir.

2002 - Venezuela's interim president, Pedro Carmona, resigned a day after taking office. Thousands of protesters had supported over the ousting of president Hugo Chavez.

Current Birthdays


Al Green turns 63 years old today.


85 Stanley Donen
Director


76 Ben Nighthorse Campbell
Former U.S. senator, R-Colo.


74 Lyle Waggoner
Actor


70 Seamus Heaney
Nobel Prize-winning poet


72 Edward Fox
Actor


72 Lanford Wilson
Playwright


70 Paul Sorvino
Actor


67 Bill Conti
Composer


65 Jack Casady
Rock musician (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna)


64 Tony Dow
Actor, director


59 Ron Perlman
Actor


59 William Sadler
Actor


58 Peabo Bryson
R&B singer


58 Max Weinberg
Rock musician (E Street Band)


57 Sam Bush
Bluegrass musician


55 Jimmy Destri
Rock musician (Blondie)


52 Gary Kroeger
Actor, comedian


52 Saundra Santiago
Actress


49 Bob Casey
U.S. senator, D-Pa.


48 Joey Mazzola
Rock musician (Sponge)


46 Garry Kasparov
Chess champion


45 Page Hannah
Actress


45 Davis Love III
Golfer


45 Caroline Rhea
Actress, comedian


44 Lisa Umbarger
Rock musician


43 Marc Ford
Rock musician (The Black Crowes)


42 Capleton
Reggae singer


39 Ricky Schroder
Actor


37 Aaron Lewis
Rock singer (Staind)


36 Bokeem Woodbine
Actor


34 Lou Bega
Singer


33 Glenn Howerton
Actor, producer


28 Courtney Peldon
Actress ("Boston Public")


27 Nellie McKay
Singer


http://board.freeones.com/member.php?u=63480

jibbijib turns 22 today

Historic Birthdays


Samuel Beckett

4/13/1906 - 12/22/1989
Irish-born author, critic, and playwright; won the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature

40 Peter Faber
4/13/1506 - 8/1/1546
French Jesuit theologian and co-founder of the Society of Jesus


83 Thomas Jefferson
4/13/1743 - 7/4/1826
President of the United States (1801-1809) and author of the Declaration of Independence


61 Sir Thomas Lawrence
4/13/1769 - 1/7/1830
English portrait painter and draftsman


80 Eli Terry
4/13/1772 - 2/26/1852
American clockmaker and an innovator in mass production


59 Sir William Benett
4/13/1816 - 2/1/1875
English pianist, conductor and composer


81 Martinez Gonzalez
4/13/1871 - 2/19/1952
Mexican poet, physician and diplomat


86 Gyorgy Lukacs
4/13/1885 - 6/4/1971
Hungarian Marxist philosopher, writer and literary critic


77 John Hays Hammond Jr.
4/13/1888 - 2/12/1965
American inventor; developed radio remote control


81 Sir Robert Watson-Watt
4/13/1892 - 12/5/1973
Scottish physicist; knighted for his role in the development of radar


65 John Braine
4/13/1922 - 10/28/1987
English novelist; one of the "Angry Young Men"

 

[thebear247]

wow minidog you really know your history good stuff and did mention great sig lol

 

[minidog]

1543 - Bartoleme Ferrelo returned to Spain after discovering San Francisco Bay in the New World.

1775 - The first abolitionist society in U.S. was organized in Philadelphia with Ben Franklin as president.

1793 - A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo was crushed by French republican troops.

1828 - The first edition of Noah Webster's dictionary was published under the name "American Dictionary of the English Language."

1860 - The first Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, MO.

1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth. He actually died early the next morning.

1894 - First public showing of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope took place.

1902 - James Cash (J.C.) Penney opened his first retail store in Kemmerer, WY. It was called the Golden Rule Store.

1910 - U.S. President William Howard Taft threw out the first ball for the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics.

1912 - The Atlantic passenger liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage hit an iceberg and began to sink. 1,517 people lost their lives and more than 700 survived.

1918 - The U.S. First Aero Squadron engaged in America's first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft over Toul, France.

1925 - WGN became the first radio station to broadcast a regular season major league baseball game. The Cubs beat the Pirates 8-2.

1931 - King Alfonso XIII of Spain went into exile and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.

1939 - The John Steinbeck novel "The Grapes of Wrath" was first published.

1946 - The civil war between Communists and nationalist resumed in China.

1953 - Viet Minh invaded Laos with 40,00 troops.

1956 - Ampex Corporation of Redwood City, CA, demonstrated the first commercial magnetic tape recorder for sound and picture.

1959 - The Taft Memorial Bell Tower was dedicated in Washington, DC.

1969 - For the first time, a major league baseball game was played in Montreal, Canada.

1981 - America's first space shuttle, Columbia, returned to Earth after a three-day test flight. The shuttle orbited the Earth 36 times during the mission.

1984 - The Texas Board of Education began requiring that the state's public school textbooks describe the evolution of human beings as "theory rather than fact".

1985 - The Russian paper "Pravda" called U.S. President Reagan's planned visit to Bitburg to visit the Nazi cemetery an "act of blasphemy".

1986 - U.S. President Reagan announced the U.S. air raid on military and terrorist related targets in Libya.

1987 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed banning all missiles from Europe.

1988 - Representatives from the U.S.S.R., Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S. signed an agreement that called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The last Soviet troop left Afghanistan on February 15, 1989.

1988 - In New York, real estate tycoons Harry and Leona Helmsley were indicted for income tax evasion.

1990 - Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles began a streak of 95 errorless games and 431 total chances by a shortstop.

1994 - Two American F-15 warplanes inadvertently shot down two U.S. helicopters over northern Iraq. 26 people were killed including 15 Americans.

1998 - The state of Virginia ignored the requests from the World Court and executed a Paraguayan for the murder of a U.S. woman.

1999 - Pakistan test-fired a ballistic missile that was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching its rival neighbor India.

2000 - After five years of deadlock, Russia approved the START II treaty that calls for the scrapping of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads. The Russian government warned it would abandon all arms-control pacts if Washington continued with an anti-missile system.

2002 - U.S. President George W. Bush sent a letter of congratulations to JCPenny's associates for being in business for 100 years. James Cash (J.C.) Penney had opened his first retail store on April 14, 1902.

Current Birthdays


Adrien Brody turns 36 years old today

79 Bradford Dillman
Actor


79 Jay Robinson
Actor


74 Loretta Lynn
Country singer


69 Julie Christie
Actress


68 Pete Rose
Baseball player


64 Ritchie Blackmore
Rock musician (Deep Purple)


60 John Shea
Actor


49 Brian Forster
Actor, race car driver


49 Brad Garrett
Actor ("'til Death," "Everybody Loves Raymond")


48 Robert Carlyle
Actor


47 John Bell
Rock musician (Widespread Panic)


45 Robert Clendenin
Actor


43 Greg Maddux
Baseball player


43 Lloyd Owen
Actor


42 Barrett Martin
Rock musician


41 Anthony Michael Hall
Actor


40 Brad Ausmus
Baseball player


36 David Miller
Singer (Il Divo)


35 DaBrat
Rapper


34 Antwon Tanner
Actor


32 Rob McElhenney
Actor, producer


16 Vivien Cardone
Actress ("Everwood")


13 Abigail Breslin
Actress ("Little Miss Sunshine")


Historic Birthdays


Anne Sullivan Macy

4/14/1866 - 10/20/1936
American teacher of Helen Keller


64 Francois Duvalier
4/14/1907 - 4/21/1971
Haitian president (1957-1971)


70 Juan Belmonte
4/14/1892 - 4/8/1962
Spanish bullfighter


86 Arnold Toynbee
4/14/1889 - 10/22/1975
English historian; wrote 12-volume "Study of History"


79 James Branch Cabell
4/14/1879 - 5/5/1958
American novelist; wrote "Jurgen"


72 Adna R. Chaffee
4/14/1842 - 11/1/1914
American army officer; chief of staff (1904-06)


65 Gerhard Rohlfs
4/14/1831 - 6/2/1896
German explorer; journeyed across deserts of North Africa


73 Augustus Pitt-Rivers
4/14/1827 - 5/4/1900
English archaeologist called the "father of British archaeology"


74 Horace Bushnell
4/14/1802 - 2/17/1876
American Congregational minister and controversial theologian


66 Christiaan Huygens
4/14/1629 - 7/8/1695
Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist

 

[minidog]

1784 - The first balloon was flown in Ireland.

1794 - "Courrier Francais" became the first French daily newspaper to be published in the U.S.

1813 - U.S. troops under James Wilkinson attacked the Spanish-held city of Mobile that would be in the future state of Alabama.

1817 - The first American school for the deaf was opened in Hartford, CT.

1850 - The city of San Francisco was incorporated.

1858 - At the Battle of Azimghur, the Mexicans defeated Spanish loyalists.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln mobilized the Federal army.

1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln died from injuries inflicted by John Wilkes Booth.

1871 - "Wild Bill" Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.

1880 - William Gladstone became Prime Minister of England.

1892 - The General Electric Company was organized.

1899 - Thomas Edison organized the Edison Portland Cement Company.

1912 - The ocean liner Titanic sank at 2:27 a.m. in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg the evening before. 1,517 people died and more than 700 people survived.

1917 - The British defeated the Germans at the battle of Arras.

1919 - British troops killed 400 Indians at Amritsar, India.

1923 - Insulin became generally available for people suffering with diabetes.

1934 - In the comic strip "Blondie," Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead welcomed a baby boy, Alexander. The child would be nicknamed, Baby Dumpling.

1940 - French and British troops landed at Narvik, Norway.

1945 - During World War II, British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

1947 - Jackie Robinson played his first major league baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Previously he had only appeared in exhibition games.

1948 - The Arabs were defeated in the first Jewish-Arab battle.

1952 - U.S. President Harry Truman signed the official Japanese peace treaty.

1952 - The first B-52 prototype was tested in the air.

1953 - In Buenos Aires, six people were killed by a bomb at a rally addressed by President Peron.

1953 - Pope Pius XII gave his approval of psychoanalysis but warned of possible abuses.

1953 - Charlie Chaplin surrendered his U.S. re-entry permit rather than face proceedings by the U.S. Justice Department. Chaplin was accused of sympathizing with Communist groups.

1955 - Ray Kroc started the McDonald's restaurant chain.

1956 - The worlds’ first, all-color TV station was dedicated. It was WNBQ-TV in Chicago and is now WMAQ-TV.

1956 - General Motors announced that the first free piston automobile had been developed.

1959 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro began a U.S. goodwill tour.

1960 - The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was organized at Shaw University.

1967 - Richard Speck was found guilty of murdering eight student nurses.

1983 - Tokyo Disneyland opened.

1984 - Ten members of a family were found murdered in their home in New York City. An infant was found crawling among the corpses.

1986 - U.S. F-111 warplanes attacked Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5, 1986.

1987 - In Northhampton, MA, Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 others were acquitted on civil disobedience charges related with a CIA protest.

1987 - In New York City, Mbongeni Ngema's "Asinamali!" opened as the first South African play on Broadway.

1989 - Students in Beijing launched a series of pro democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang. The protests led to the Tienanmen Square massacre.

1989 - In Sheffield, England, 93 people were killed and 180 were injured at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium when a crowd surged into an overcrowded standing area.

1994 - The World Trade Organization was established.

1997 - Christopher Reeve received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Pol Pot died at the age of 73. The leader of the Khmer Rouge regime thereby evaded prosecution for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians.

1999 - In Algeria, former Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president. All of the opposition candidates claimed that the vote was fraudulent and withdrew from the election.

1999 - In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a panel of two Lahore High Court judges convicted former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, of corruption.

2000 - 600 anti-IMF (International Monetary Fund) protesters were arrested in Washington, DC, for demonstrating without a permit.

Current Birthdays


Seth Rogen turns 27 years old today.

87 Michael Ansara
Actor


76 Roy Clark
Country musician


65 Dave Edmunds
Rock musician


62 Linda Bloodworth- Thomason
TV writer, producer ("Designing Women")


62 Lois Chiles
Actress


59 Amy Wright
Actress


58 Heloise
Columnist (Hints from Heloise)


48 Jeff Parker
Bluegrass musician


43 Samantha Fox
Singer


41 Ed O'Brien
Rock musician (Radiohead)


39 Flex Alexander
Actor


35 Danny Pino
Actor ("Cold Case")


26 Alice Braga
Actress


25 De'Mar Hamilton
Rock musician (Plain White T's)


19 Emma Watson
Actress ("Harry Potter" movies)

Historic Birthdays


A. Philip Randolph

4/15/1889 - 5/16/1979
American civil rights leader and trade unionist

76 Leonhard Euler
4/15/1707 - 9/18/1783
Swiss mathematician and physicist


86 Charles Willson Peale
4/15/1741 - 2/22/1827
American portrait painter of leading American Revolution figures


90 Walter Channing
4/15/1786 - 7/27/1876
American physician; helped found Boston Lying-In Hospital (1832)


73 Henry James
4/15/1843 - 2/28/1916
American-English novelist


83 Johannes Stark
4/15/1874 - 6/21/1957
German Nobel Prize-winning physicist (1919)


67 Leonardo da Vinci
4/15/1452 - 5/2/1519
Italian artist, architect, scientist, inventor and engineer


63 Max Wertheimer
4/15/1880 - 10/12/1943
Czech-born American psychologist; founder of Gestalt psychology


84 Stanley Bruce
4/15/1883 - 8/25/1967
Australian statesman and diplomat; prime minister (1923-29)


86 Thomas Hart Benton
4/15/1889 - 1/19/1975
American painter associated with the American Regionalists of the 1930's


44 Arshile Gorky
4/15/1904 - 7/21/1948
Turkish-born American postsurrealist abstract painter


81 Nikolaas Tinbergen
4/15/1907 - 12/21/1988
Dutch-born English zoologist and ethologist; won Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (1973)


65 Harold Washington
4/15/1922 - 11/25/1987
American politician; first African-American mayor of Chicago


42 Bessie Smith
4/15/1895 - 9/26/1937
American blues singer

 

[minidog]

0069 - Otho committed suicide after being defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum.

0556 - Pelagius I began his reign as Catholic Pope.

1065 - The Norman Robert Guiscard took Bari. Five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy ended.

1175 - Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, signed the Treaty of Montebello with the Lombard League.

1705 - Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton.

1746 - The Duke of Cumberland defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie (and his Jacobites) at the battle of Culloden.

1818 - The U.S. Senate ratified Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border.

1851 - A lighthouse was swept away in a gale at Minot’s Ledge, MA.

1854 - San Salvador was destroyed by an earthquake.

1862 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved conscription act for white males between 18 and 35.

1862 - In the U.S., slavery was abolished by law in the District of Columbia.

1883 - Paul Kruger became president of the South African Republic.

1900 - The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.

1905 - Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000,000 of personal money to set up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

1912 - Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

1917 - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution after years of exile.

1922 - Annie Oakley shot 100 clay targets in a row, to set a women's record.

1922 - The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo under which Germany recognized the Soviet Union and diplomatic and trade relations were restored.

1935 - "Fibber McGee and Molly" premiered.

1940 - The first no-hit, no-run game to be thrown on an opening day of the major league baseball season was earned by Bob Feller. The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0.

1942 - The Island of Malta was awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack.

1944 - The destroyer USS Laffey survived immense damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa.

1945 - American troops entered Nuremberg, Germany.

1947 - The Zoomar lens, invented by Dr. Frank Back, was demonstrated in New York City. It was the first lens to exhibit zooming effects.

1947 - In Texas City, TX, the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up. The explosions and resulting fires killed 576 people.

1948 - In Paris, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation was set up.

1951 - 75 people were killed when the British submarine Affray sank in the English Channel.

1953 - The British royal yacht Britannia was launched.

1962 - Walter Cronkite began anchoring "The CBS Evening News".

1968 - The Pentagon announced that troops would begin coming home from Vietnam.

1968 - Major league baseball’s longest night game was played. The 24 innings took six hours, six minutes to play.

1972 - Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon. It was the fifth manned moon landing.

1972 - Two giants pandas arrived in the U.S. from China.

1975 - The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after a five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror.

1977 - The ban on women attending West Point was lifted.

1978 - In Orissa, India, 180 people died when a tornado hit.

1982 - Queen Elizabeth proclaimed Canada's new constitution in effect. The act severed the last colonial links with Britain.

1985 - Mickey Mantle was reinstated after being banned from baseball for several years.

1987 - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sternly warned U.S. radio stations to watch the use of indecent language on the airwaves.

1987 - The U.S. Patent Office began allowing the patenting of new animals created by genetic engineering.

1992 - Italian financier Carlo de Benedetti and 32 others were convicted of fraud in connection with the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

1992 - The House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts.

1995 - The European Union and Canada agreed to protect threatened fish stocks in the north Atlantic.

1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, the Duchess of York, announced that they were in the process of getting a divorce.

1996 - An Italian court found former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi guilty on charges of corruption. He was sentenced to eight years and three months in prison.

1999 - Wayne Gretzky announced his retirement from the National Hockey League (NHL).

2002 - The U.S. Supreme Court overturned major parts of a 1996 child pornography law based on rights to free speech.

Current Birthdays


Pope Benedict XVI turns 82 years old today


82 Peter Mark Richman
Actor


74 Bobby Vinton
Singer


69 Queen Margrethe II
Queen of Denmark


62 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Basketball Hall of Famer


62 Gerry Rafferty
Rock singer


56 Peter Garrett
Rock singer (Midnight Oil), Australia's environment minister


55 Ellen Barkin
Actress


47 Jason Scheff
Rock musician (Chicago)


46 Jimmy Osmond
Singer


45 David Pirner
Rock singer (Soul Asylum)


44 Jon Cryer
Actor ("Two and a Half Men")


44 Martin Lawrence
Actor, comedian


43 Dan Rieser
Rock musician


37 Peter Billingsley
Actor ("A Christmas Story")


33 Lukas Haas
Actor

Historic Birthdays


Sir Charlie Chaplin

4/16/1889 - 12/25/1977
English-born American motion- picture actor and director

70 Henry Mancini
4/16/1924 - 6/14/1994
American composer


73 Sir Kingsley Amis
4/16/1922 - 10/22/1995
English novelist, poet and critic


67 Nikolay P. Akimov
4/16/1901 - 9/6/1968
Russian scenic designer and producer


38 John M. Synge
4/16/1871 - 3/24/1909
Irish poetic dramatist


45 Wilbur Wright
4/16/1867 - 5/30/1912
American inventor and aviation pioneer


80 Anatole France
4/16/1844 - 10/12/1924
French writer; won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1921)


72 Ford Madox Brown
4/16/1821 - 10/6/1893
English painter


61 Sir John Franklin
4/16/1786 - 6/11/1847
English rear admiral and explorer


87 Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun
4/16/1755 - 3/30/1842
French painter


93 Sir Hans Sloane
4/16/1660 - 1/11/1753
English physician and naturalist

 

[minidog]

1492 - Christopher Columbus signed a contract with Spain to find a passage to Asia and the Indies.

1521 - Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

1524 - New York Harbor was discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.

1535 - Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain.

1629 - Horses were first imported into the colonies by the American Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1704 - John Campbell published what would eventually become the first successful American newspaper. It was known as the Boston "News-Letter."

1758 - Frances Williams published a collection of Latin poems. He was the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere.

1808 - Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships.

1810 - Pineapple cheese was patented by Lewis M. Norton.

1824 - Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54' 40'.

1860 - New Yorkers learned of a new law that required fire escapes to be provided for tenement houses.

1861 - Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union.

1864 - U.S. Civil War General Grant banned the trading of prisoners.

1865 - Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.

1875 - The game "snooker" was invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.

1895 - China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It was the end of the first Sino-Japanese War. In the treaty China ceded Taiwan to Japan.

1916 - The American Academy of Arts and Letters obtained a charter from the U.S. Congress.

1917 - A bill in Congress to establish Daylight Saving Time was defeated. It was passed a couple of months later.

1935 - "Lights Out" debuted on NBC Radio. It ran until 1952.

1941 - Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.

1941 - The office of Price Administration was established in the U.S. to handle rationing.

1946 - The last French troops left Syria.

1947 - Jackie Robinson (Brooklyn Dodgers) performed a bunt for his first major league hit.

1961 - About 1,400 U.S.-supported Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was an unsuccessful attack.

1964 - Jerrie Mock became first woman to fly an airplane solo around the world.

1964 - The Ford Motor Company unveiled its new Mustang model.

1967 - "The Joey Bishop Show" debuted on ABC-TV.

1967 - The U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali's request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army.

1969 - In Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1969 - Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed.

1970 - Apollo 13 returned to Earth safely after an on-board accident with an oxygen tank.

1975 - Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It was the end of the five-year war.

1983 - In Warsaw, police routed 1,000 Solidarity supporters.

1984 - In London, gunmen from the Libyan Embassy fired into an anti-Libya protest. One policewoman was killed and 10 others were wounded.

1985 - The U.S. Postal Service unveiled its new 22-cent, "LOVE" stamp.

1985 - In Lebanon, the cabinet resigned as Shiites took W. Beirut.

1987 - In Sri Lanka, Tamil guerrillas killed 122 people in a road ambush.

1989 - In Poland, courts gave Solidarity legal status.

1993 - A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King. Two other officers were acquitted.

1996 - Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents.

1999 - In India, the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee collapsed after losing a vote of confidence.

2002 - At the National Maritime Museum in London, the exhibit "Skin Deep - A History of Tattooing" opened.

Current Birthdays


Jennifer Garner turns 37 years old today.


75 Don Kirshner
Rock promoter


61 Jan Hammer
Composer, musician


58 Olivia Hussey
Actress


57 Clarke Peters
Actor


54 Pete Shelley
Rock musician (Buzzcocks)


50 Sean Bean
Actor


45 Maynard James Keenan
Rock singer


45 Lela Rochon
Actress


44 William Mapother
Actor ("Lost")


42 Leslie Bega
Actor


42 Kimberly Elise
Actress


42 Marquis Grissom
Baseball player


42 Liz Phair
Rock singer


39 Redman
Rapper, actor


36 Craig Anderson
Country musician (Heartland)


31 Lindsay Korman
Actress, singer


14 Paulie Litt
Actor ("Hope and Faith")


13 Dee Dee Davis
Actress ("The Bernie Mac Show")

Historic Birthdays


Nikita S. Khrushchev

4/17/1894 - 9/11/1971
Russian statesman; premier of the Soviet Union (1958-64)


70 Samuel Chase
4/17/1741 - 6/19/1811
American jurist and signer of the Declaration of Independence


64 William Simms
4/17/1806 - 6/11/1870
American journalist and novelist


76 J. P. Morgan
4/17/1837 - 3/31/1913
American financier; formed U. S. Steel


80 Sir Leonard Woolley
4/17/1880 - 2/20/1960
English archaeologist; excavated the Sumerian city of Ur


69 Artur Schnabel
4/17/1882 - 8/15/1951
Austrian pianist and teacher


77 Isak Dinesen
4/17/1885 - 9/7/1962
Danish writer


78 Thornton Wilder
4/17/1897 - 12/7/1975
American novelist and playwright


95 Sir Vincent Wigglesworth
4/17/1899 - 2/11/1994
English entomologist


68 Harry Reasoner
4/17/1923 - 8/6/1991
American newscaster, correspondent and journalist


wow
Jennifer Garner turns 37 years old today.
thought she was younger

 

[thebear247]

1492 -


wow
Jennifer Garner turns 37 years old today.
thought she was younger

wow me too she looks damn good for 37

 

[minidog]

1521 - Martin Luther confronted the emperor Charles V in the Diet of Worms and refused to retract his views that led to his excommunication.

1676 - Sudbury, Massachusetts, was attacked by Indians.

1775 - American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that "the British are coming."

1791 - National Guardsmen prevented Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.

1818 - A regiment of Indians and blacks were defeated at the Battle of Suwann, in Florida, ending the first Seminole War.

1834 - William Lamb became prime minister of England.

1838 - The Wilkes' expedition to the South Pole set sail.

1846 - The telegraph ticker was patented by R.E. House

1847 - U.S. forces defeated the Mexicans at Cerro Gordo.

1853 - The first train in Asia began running from Bombay to Tanna.

1861 - Colonel Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command the Union armies during the U.S. Civil War.

1877 - Charles Cros wrote a paper that described the process of recording and reproducing sound. In France, Cros is regarded as the inventor of the phonograph. In the U.S., Thomas Edison gets the credit.

1895 - New York State passed an act that established free public baths.

1906 - San Francisco, CA, was hit with an earthquake. The orginal death toll was cited at about 700. Later information indicated that the death toll may have been 3 to 4 times the original estimate.

1910 - Walter R. Brookins made the first airplane flight at night.

1923 - Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx, NY. The Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1. John Phillip Sousa's band played the National Anthem.

1924 - Simon and Schuster, Inc. published the first "Crossword Puzzle Book."

1934 - The first Laundromat opened in Fort Worth, TX.

1937 - Leon Trotsky called for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1938 - U.S. President Roosevelt threw out the first ball preceding the season opener between the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics.

1942 - James H. Doolittle and his squadron, from the USS Hornet, raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

1942 - The Vichy government capitulated to Adolf Hitler and invited Pierre Laval to form a new government in France.

1943 - Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was shot down by American P-38 fighters.

1945 - American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa. He was 44 years old.

1946 - The League of Nations was dissolved.

1949 - The Republic of Ireland was established.

1950 - The first transatlantic jet passenger trip was completed.

1954 - Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt.

1955 - Albert Einstein died.

1956 - Actress Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco were married. The religious ceremony took place April 19.

1960 - The Mutual Broadcasting System was sold to the 3M Company of Minnesota for $1.25 million.

1978 - The U.S. Senate approved the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999.

1979 - The TV show "Real People" premiered.

1980 - Rhodesia became in independent nation of Zimbabwe.

1983 - The U.S. Embassy in Beirut was blown up by a suicide car-bomber. 63 people were killed including 17 Americans.

1984 - Daredevils Mike MacCarthy and Amanda Tucker made a sky dive from the Eiffel Tower. The jump ended safely.

1985 - Ted Turner filed for a hostile takeover of CBS.

1985 - Tulane University abolished its 72-year-old basketball program. The reason was charges of fixed games, drug abuse, and payments to players.

1989 - Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing.

1999 - Wayne Gretzky (New York Rangers) played his final game in the NHL. He retired as the NHL's all-time leading scorer and holder of 61 individual records.

2000 - The Nasdaq had the biggest one-day point gain in its history.

2000 - Joan Lunden and Jeff Konigsberg were married.

2002 - Actor Robert Blake and his bodyguard were arrested in connection with the shooting death of Blake's wife about a year before.

2002 - The Amtrack Auto Train derailed in a remote area of north Florida. Four people were killed and 133 were injured.

2002 - The city legislature of Berlin decided to make Marlene Dietrich an honorary citizen. Dietrich had gone to the United States in 1930. She refused to return to Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power.

Current Birthdays


America Ferrera turns 25 years old today.


88 Barbara Hale
Actress


79 Clive Revill
Actor


75 James Drury
Actor ("The Virginian")


72 Robert Hooks
Actor


63 Hayley Mills
Actress


62 Dorothy Lyman
Actor, director


62 Cindy Pickett
Actress


62 Walt Richmond
Country musician (The Tractors)


62 James Woods
Actor


57 Jim Scholten
Country musician (Sawyer Brown)


56 Rick Moranis
Actor


53 John James
Actor


53 Eric Roberts
Actor


53 Melody Thomas Scott
Actress ("The Young and the Restless")


51 Les Pattinson
Rock musician (Echo and the Bunnymen)


48 Jane Leeves
Actress ("Frasier")


46 Terry Eldredge
Bluegrass musician (The Grascals)


46 Conan O'Brien
Talk show host


42 Maria Bello
Actress


41 Mary Birdsong
Actress ("Reno 911!")


39 Greg Eklund
Rock musician


38 David Tennant
Actor


35 Marvin Evatt
Country musician (Carolina Rain)


35 Trina
R&B singer (Trina and Tamara)


33 Melissa Joan Hart
Actress ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch")


33 Sean Maguire
Actor


20 Alia Shawkat
Actress ("Arrested Development')


15 Moises Arias
Actor ("Hannah Montana")


Historic Birthdays


Clarence Darrow

4/18/1857 - 3/13/1938
American defense lawyer; represented Eugene V. Debs and John T. Scopes

39 Lucrezia Borgia
4/18/1480 - 6/24/1519
Italian Renaissance noblewoman of the Borgia family


79 Gaetano Vestris
4/18/1729 - 9/23/1808
French ballet dancer


61 George Henry Lewes
4/18/1817 - 11/28/1878
English philosopher, critic, actor, scientist and editor


55 Carlos Cespedes
4/18/1819 - 3/22/1874
Cuban revolutionary; early fighter for independence from Spain


104 Dhondo Keshav Karve
4/18/1858 - 11/9/1962
Indian social reformer; supported the education of women


80 Max Weber
4/18/1881 - 10/4/1961
Russian-born American painter, printmaker and sculptor


95 Leopold Stokowski
4/18/1882 - 9/13/1977
English-born American conductor


93 George H. Hitchings
4/18/1905 - 2/27/1998
American Nobel Prize-winning pharmacologist (1988)


79 Little Brother Montgomery
4/18/1906 - 9/6/1985
American jazz pianist and vocalist

 

[minidog]

1012 - Aelfheah was murdered by Danes who had been ravaging the south of England. Aelfhear became the 29th Archbishop of Canterbury in 1005.

1539 - Emperor Charles V reached a truce with German Protestants at Frankfurt, Germany.

1587 - English admiral Sir Francis Drake entered Cadiz harbor and sank the Spanish fleet.

1689 - Residents of Boston ousted their governor, Edmond Andros.

1713 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which gave women the rights of succession to Hapsburg possessions.

1764 - The English Parliament banned the American colonies from printing paper money.

1770 - Captain James Cook discovered New South Wales, Australia. Cook originally named the land Point Hicks.

1775 - The American Revolution began as fighting broke out at Lexington, MA.

1782 - The Netherlands recognized the new United States.

1794 - Tadeusz Kosciuszko forced the Russians out of Warsaw.

1802 - The Spanish reopened the New Orleans port to American merchants.

1839 - The Kingdom of Belgium was recognized by all the states of Europe when the Treaty of London was signed.

1852 - The California Historical Society was founded.

1861 - Thaddeus S. C. Lowe sailed 900 miles in nine hours in a hot air balloon.

1861 - The Baltimore riots resulted in four Union soldiers and nine civilians killed.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports.

1892 - The Duryea gasoline buggy was introduced in the U.S. by Charles and Frank Duryea.

1897 - The first annual Boston Marathon was held. It was the first of its type in the U.S.

1927 - In China, Hankow communists declared war on Chaing Kai-shek.

1933 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation that removed the U.S. went off of the gold standard.

1938 - General Francisco Franco declared victory in the Spanish Civil War.

1939 - Connecticut approved the Bill of Rights for the U.S. Constitution after 148 years.

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule began. The Jews were able to fight off the Germans for 28 days.

1951 - General Douglas MacArthur gave his "Old Soldiers" speech before the U.S. Congress. In the address General MacArthur said that "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

1951 - Shigeki Tanaka won the Boston Marathon. Tanaka had survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.

1956 - Actress Grace Kelly became Princess Grace of Monaco when she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The civil ceremony took place on April 18.

1958 - The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers played the first major league baseball game on the West Coast.

1960 - Baseball uniforms began displaying player's names on their backs.

1967 - Surveyor 3 landed on the moon and began sending photos back to the U.S.

1971 - Russia launched the Salyut into orbit around Earth. It was the first space station.

1975 - India launched its first satellite with aid from the USSR.

1977 - Alex Haley received a special Pulitzer Prize for his book "Roots."

1982 - NASA named Sally Ride to be first woman astronaut.

1987 - In Phoenix, AZ, skydiver Gregory Robertson went into a 200-mph free-fall to save an unconscious colleague 3,500 feet from the ground.

1987 - The last California condor known to be in the wild was captured and placed in a breeding program at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

1989 - A gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa. 47 sailors were killed.

1989 - A giant asteroid passed within 500,000 miles of Earth.

1989 - In El Salvador, Attorney General Alvadora was killed by a car bomb.

1993 - The Branch-Davidian’s compound in Waco, TX, burned to the ground. It was the end of a 51-day standoff between the cult and U.S. federal agents. 86 people were killed including 17 children. Nine of the Branch Davidians escaped the fire.

1994 - A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to Rodney King for violation of his civil rights.

1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, was destroyed by a bomb. It was the worst bombing on U.S. territory. 168 people were killed including 19 children, and 500 were injured. Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing on June 2, 1997.

1998 - Wang Dan, a leader of 1989 Tienanmen Square pro democracy protests, was freed by the Chinese government.

2000 - The Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the fifth anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma that killed 168 people.

2000 - Letters written by Greta Garbo were put on exhibit. The letters were made public ten years after Garbo's death.

2000 - In the Philippines, Air Philippines GAP 541 crashed while preparing to land. 131 people were killed.

2002 - The USS Cole was relaunched. In Yemen, 17 sailors were killed when the ship was attacked by terrorists on October 12, 2000. The attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.


Current Birthdays


James Franco turns 31 years old today.

84 Hugh O'Brian
Actor


72 Elinor Donahue
Actress ("Father Knows Best")


67 Alan Price
Rock musician (The Animals)


63 Tim Curry
Actor


62 Mark "Flo" Volman
Singer (The Turtles, Flo and Eddie)


57 Tony Plana
Actor ("Ugly Betty")


44 Suge Knight
Record company executive (Tha Row)


42 Dar Williams
Singer, songwriter


41 Bekka Bramlett
Rock singer


41 Ashley Judd
Actress


39 Luis Miguel
Singer


35 Madeleine Peyroux
Jazz singer


30 Kate Hudson
Actress


28 Hayden Christensen
Actor


28 Catalina Sandino Moreno
Actress


28 Troy Polamalu
Football player


22 Courtland Mead
Actor

Historic Birthdays


Getulio Vargas

4/19/1883 - 8/24/1954
Brazilian president (1930-45, 1951-54)

72 Roger Sherman
4/19/1721 - 7/23/1793
American statesman and signer of the Declaration of Independence


84 Jose Echegaray y Eizaguirre
4/19/1832 - 9/4/1916
Spanish mathematician, statesman, and Nobel Prize-winning dramatist (1904)


86 Lucretia Garfield
4/19/1832 - 3/14/1918
American first lady (1881)


57 Ole Evinrude
4/19/1877 - 7/12/1934
Norwegian-American inventor


70 Richard von Mises
4/19/1883 - 7/14/1953
Austrian-born American mathematician and aerodynamicist


54 Eliot Ness
4/19/1903 - 5/16/1957
American crime fighter; headed the "Untouchables" in Chicago


85 Sir Thomas Hopkinson
4/19/1905 - 6/20/1990
English editor and pioneering photojournalist


87 Glenn T. Seaborg
4/19/1912 - 2/25/1999
American Nobel Prize-winning nuclear chemist (1951)


34 Jayne Mansfield
4/19/1933 - 6/29/1967
American motion picture actress

 

[coleman_stoops]

Getting a jump on tomorrow: 20 April 1889 was the day on which Adolf Hitler was born. Perhaps one of the sorriest days in mankind's history.

 

[minidog]

1519 - Envoys of Montezuma II attended the first Easter mass in Central America.

1547 - Charles V's troops defeated the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the battle of Muhlburg.

1558 - Mary, Queen of Scotland, married the French dauphin, Francis.

1800 - The Library of Congress was established with a $5,000 allocation.

1805 - The U.S. Marines attacked and captured the town of Derna in Tripoli.

1833 - A patent was granted for first soda fountain.

1877 - Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

1877 - In the U.S., federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans. This was the end to the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.

1884 - Otto von Bismarck cabled Cape Town that South Africa was now a German colony.

1889 - The Edison General Electric Company was organized.

1897 - William Price became the first to be named White House news reporter.

1898 - Spain declared war on the U.S., rejecting America's ultimatum for Spain to withdraw from Cuba.

1915 - During World War I, the Ottoman Turkish Empire began the mass deportation of Armenians.

1916 - Irish nationalist launched the Easter Rebellion against British occupation forces. They were overtaken several days later.

1944 - The first B-29 arrived in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas.

1948 - The Berlin airlift began to relieve the surrounded city.

1952 - Raymond Burr made his TV acting debut on the "Gruen Guild Playhouse" in an episode titled, "The Tiger."

1953 - Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

1955 - "X-Minus One," a science fiction show, was first heard for the first time on NBC radio.

1961 - Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers struck out 18 batters becoming the first major-league pitcher to do so on two different occasions.

1961 - U.S. President Kennedy accepted "sole responsibility" following Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

1962 - MIT sent a TV signal by satellite for the first time.

1967 - Soviet astronaut Vladimir Komarov died when his craft crashed with a tangled parachute.

1967 - The newest Greek regime banned miniskirts.

1968 - Leftist students took over several campus buildings at Columbia University.

1970 - The People's Republic of China launched its first satellite.

1973 - Albert Sabin reported that herpesviruses were factors in nine kinds of cancer.

1974 - David Bowie released "Diamond Dogs."

1981 - The IBM Personal Computer was introduced.

1987 - In Palm Bay, FL, a gunman opened fire in a mall. He killed six and wounded 10.

1989 - Thousands of students began striking in Beijing.

1990 - The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, FL. It was carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

1990 - Michael Milken plead guilty to six felonies and agreed to pay a $600 million penalty. He was later sentenced to ten years in prison. Milken had sold junk-bond in the 1980s.

1994 - Madonna visited the San Antonio Spurs locker room to congratulate David Robinson on his 71-point performance.

1997 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. The global treaty banned the development, production, storage and use of chemical weapons.

1998 - ABC confirmed that it was canceling the TV series "Ellen." The show was the first series to feature an openly gay lead character.

2000 - ABC-TV aired the TV movie "The Three Stooges."

2003 - A U.S. official reported the North Korea had claimed to have nuclear weapons.


Current Birthdays


Shirley MacLaine turns 75 years old today.

69 Sue Grafton
Author


69 Michael Parks
Actor


67 Richard M. Daley
Mayor of Chicago


67 Barbra Streisand
Singer, actress


66 Richard Sterban
Country singer (The Oak Ridge Boys)


64 Doug Clifford
Rock musician (Creedence Clearwater Revival)


59 Rob Hyman
Rock musician (The Hooters)


56 Eric Bogosian
Actor


54 Michael O'Keefe
Actor


52 David J
Rock musician (Bauhaus)


50 Glenn Morshower
Actor ("24")


46 Billy Gould
Rock musician (Faith No More)


45 Djimon Hounsou
Actor


45 Cedric the Entertainer
Actor, comedian


42 Patty Schemel
Rock musician (Hole)


42 Omar Vizquel
Baseball player


41 Aaron Comess
Rock musician (Spin Doctors)


40 Melinda Clarke
Actress


38 Alejandro Fernandez
Singer


37 Chipper Jones
Baseball player


35 Derek Luke
Actor


32 Eric Balfour
Actor ("24")


32 Carlos Beltran
Baseball player


30 Rebecca Lynn Howard
Country singer


27 Kelly Clarkson
Singer ("American Idol")


25 Tyson Ritter
Rock musician (The All-American Rejects)

Historic Birthdays


Robert Penn Warren

4/24/1905 - 9/15/1989
American novelist, poet, critic and teacher

79 St. Vincent De Paul
4/24/1581 - 9/27/1660
French founder of the Congregation of the Mission


78 Giovanni Battista Martini
4/24/1706 - 10/4/1784
Italian composer, music theorist and teacher


80 Robert Bailey Thomas
4/24/1766 - 5/19/1846
American publisher of "Old Farmer's Almanac"


67 Anthony Trollope
4/24/1815 - 12/6/1882
English novelist


95 Henri-Philippe Petain
4/24/1856 - 7/23/1951
French general; World War I hero and head of French Vichy government (1940-44)


63 John R. Pope
4/24/1874 - 8/27/1937
American architect; designed the National Gallery of Art


63 Sir Stafford Cripps
4/24/1889 - 4/21/1952
English chancellor of the exchequer (1947-50)


93 Willem de Kooning
4/24/1904 - 3/19/1997
Dutch-born American painter


40 William Joyce
4/24/1906 - 1/3/1946
English propagandist for Germany during World War II (aka Lord Haw Haw)

 

[minidog]

1478 - Pazzi conspirators attacked Lorenzo and kill Giuliano de'Medici.

1514 - Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.

1607 - The British established an American colony at Cape Henry, Virginia. It was the first permanent English establishment in the Western Hemisphere.

1819 - The first Odd Fellows lodge in the U.S. was established in Baltimore, MD.

1865 - Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Sherman during the American Civil War.

1865 - John Wilkes Booth was killed by the U.S. Federal Cavalry.

1906 - In Hawaii, motion pictures were shown for the first time.

1921 - Weather broadcasts were heard for the first time on radio in St. Louis, MO.

1929 - First non-stop flight from England to India was completed.

1931 - New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hit a home run but was called out for passing a runner.

1931 - NBC premiered "Lum and Abner." It was on the air for 24 years.

1937 - German planes attacked Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War.

1937 - "LIFE" magazine was printed without the word "LIFE" on the cover.

1937 - "Lorenzo Jones" premiered on NBC radio.

1941 - An organ was played at a baseball stadium for the first time in Chicago, IL.

1945 - Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France's Vichy government during World War II, was arrested.

1952 - Patty Berg set a new record for major women’s golf competition when she shot a 64 over 18 holes in a tournament in Richmond, CA.

1954 - Grace Kelly was on the cover of "LIFE" magazine.

1964 - The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

1964 - The Boston Celtics won their sixth consecutive NBA title. They won two more before the streak came to an end.

1968 - Students seized the administration building at Ohio State University.

1982 - Argentina surrendered to Britain over Falkland Island crisis.

1983 - Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 1,200 for first time.

1985 - In Argentina, a fire at a mental hospital killed 79 people and injured 247.

1986 - The world’s worst nuclear disaster to date occurred at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. 31 died in the incident and thousands more were exposed to radioactive material.

1998 - Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he'd compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war was made public.

2000 - Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar purchased the NHL's New York Islanders.

2002 - In Erfurt, Germany, an expelled student killed 17 people at his former school. The student then killed himself.

miniD is hungover!

 

[minidog]

1296 - The Scots were defeated by Edward I at the Battle of Dunbar.

1509 - Pope Julius II excommunicated the Italian state of Venice.

1521 - Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.

1565 - The first Spanish settlement in Philippines was established in Cebu City.

1805 - A force led by U.S. Marines captured the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.

1813 - Americans under Gen. Pike capture York (present day Toronto) the seat of government in Ontario.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

1861 - West Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union during the American Civil War.

1863 - The Army of the Potomac began marching on Chancellorsville.

1865 - In the U.S. the Sultana exploded while carrying 2,300 Union POWs. Between 1,400 - 2,000 were killed.

1880 - Francis Clarke and M.G. Foster patented the electrical hearing aid.

1897 - Grant's Tomb was dedicated.

1899 - The Western Golf Association was founded in Chicago, IL.

1903 - Jamaica Race Track opened in Long Island, NY.

1909 - The sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, was overthrown.

1937 - German bombers devastated Guernica, Spain.

1938 - Geraldine Apponyi married King Zog of Albania. She was the first American woman to become a queen.

1938 - A colored baseball was used for the first time in any baseball game. The ball was yellow and was used between Columbia and Fordham Universities in New York City.

1945 - The Second Republic was founded in Austria.

1946 - The SS African Star was placed in service. It was the first commercial ship to be equipped with radar.

1947 - "Babe Ruth Day" was celebrated at Yankee Stadium.

1950 - South Africa passed the Group Areas Act, which formally segregated races.

1953 - The U.S. offered $50,000 and political asylum to any Communist pilot that delivered a MIG jet.

1953 - Five people were killed and 60 injured when Mt. Aso erupted on the island of Kyushu.

1960 - The submarine Tullibee was launched from Groton, CT. It was the first sub to be equipped with closed-circuit television.

1961 - The United Kingdom granted Sierra Leone independence.

1965 - "Pampers" were patented by R.C. Duncan.

1967 - In Montreal, Prime Minister Lester Pearson lighted a flame to open Expo 67.

1975 - Saigon was encircled by North Vietnamese troops.

1978 - Pro-Soviet Marxists seized control of Afghanistan.

1982 - The trial of John W. Hinckley Jr. began in Washington. Hinckley was later acquitted by reason of insanity for the shooting of U.S. President Reagan and three others.

1983 - Nolan Ryan (Houston Astros) broke a 55-year-old major league baseball record when he struck out his 3,509th batter of his career.

1984 - In London, Libyan gunmen left the Libyan Embassy 11 days after killing a policewoman and wounding 10 others.

1986 - Captain Midnight (John R. MacDougall) interrupted HBO.

1989 - Student protestors took over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

1987 - The U.S. Justice Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the U.S. He claimed that he had aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.

1992 - The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed in Belgrade by the Republic of Serbia and its ally Montenegro.

1992 - Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

2005 - The A380, the world's largest jetliner, completed its maiden flight. The passenger capability was 840.

2005 - Russian President Vladimir Putin became the first Kremlin leader to visit Israel.

2006 - In New York, NY, construction began on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower on the site of former World Trade Center.

miniD is sober

Current Birthdays


Herm Edwards turns 55 years old today.


87 Jack Klugman
Actor ("The Odd Couple," "Quincy")


77 Anouk Aimee
Actress


77 Casey Kasem
Radio announcer, voice actor


70 Judy Carne
Actress


68 Judith Blegen
Opera singer


65 Cuba Gooding
R&B singer


62 Ann Peebles
R&B singer


61 Kate Pierson
Rock singer (B-52s)


60 Herbie Murrell
R&B singer (The Stylistics)


60 Douglas Sheehan
Actor


58 Ace Frehley
Rock musician (Kiss)


50 Sheena Easton
Singer, actress


47 James Le Gros
Actor


44 Rob Squires
Rock musician (Big Head Todd and the Monsters)


40 Mica Paris
R&B singer


34 Chris Carpenter
Baseball player


33 Sally Hawkins
Actress


30 Travis Meeks
Rock musician (Days of the New)


26 Ari Graynor
Actress


25 Patrick Stump
Rock musician (Fall Out Boy)


22 William Moseley
Actor ("The Chronicles of Narnia" films)

Historic Birthdays


Ulysses S. Grant

4/27/1822 - 7/23/1885
18th president of the United States (1869-77) and Civil War general

49 Claude Gillot
4/27/1673 - 5/4/1722
French painter, engraver and theatrical designer


74 Nikolay Novikov
4/27/1744 - 7/31/1818
Russian writer, philanthropist and social critic


38 Mary Wollstonecraft
4/27/1759 - 9/10/1797
English writer and women's rights advocate


81 Samuel Morse
4/27/1791 - 4/2/1872
American painter and developer of the telegraph


83 Herbert Spencer
4/27/1820 - 12/8/1903
English sociologist and philosopher


71 Edward Whymper
4/27/1840 - 9/16/1911
English artist and mountaineer; first man to climb the Matterhorn


67 Rogers Hornsby
4/27/1896 - 1/5/1963
American professional baseball player


41 Wallace Hume Carothers
4/27/1896 - 4/29/1937
American chemist; developed nylon


95 Walter Lantz
4/27/1899 - 3/22/1994
American film animator; creator of "Woody Woodpecker"

 

[minidog]

0357 - Constantius II visited Rome for the first time.

1282 - Villagers in Palermo led a revolt against French rule in Sicily.

1635 - Virginia Governor John Harvey was accused of treason and removed from office.

1686 - The first volume of Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathamatic" was published.

1788 - Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U.S. constitution.

1789 - A mutiny on the British ship Bounty took place when a rebel crew took the ship and set sail to Pitcairn Island. The mutineers left Captain W. Bligh and 18 sailors adrift.

1818 - U.S. President James Monroe proclaimed naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

1896 - The Addressograph was patented by J.S. Duncan.

1902 - A revolution broke out in the Dominican Republic.

1910 - First night air flight was performed by Claude Grahame-White in England.

1914 - W.H. Carrier patented the design of his air conditioner.

1916 - The British declared martial law throughout Ireland.

1919 - The League of Nations was founded.

1920 - Azerbaijan joined the USSR.

1930 - The first organized night baseball game was played in Independence, Kansas.

1932 - The yellow fever vaccine for humans was announced.

1937 - The first animated-cartoon electric sign was displayed on a building on Broadway in New York City. It was created by Douglas Leight.

1945 - Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.

1946 - The Allies indicted Tojo with 55 counts of war crimes.

1947 - Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia. The trip began in Peru and took 101 days to complete the crossing of the Pacific Ocean.

1952 - The U.S. occupation of Japan officially ended when a treaty with the U.S. and 47 other countries went into effect.

1953 - French troops evacuated northern Laos.

1957 - Mike Wallace was seen on TV for the first time. He was the host of "Mike Wallace Interviews."

1959 - Arthur Godfrey was seen for the last time in the final broadcast of "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends" on CBS-TV.

1965 - The U.S. Army and Marines invaded the Dominican Republic to evacuate Americans.

1967 - Muhammad Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army and was stripped of boxing title. He sited religious grounds for his refusal.

1969 - Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France.

1969 - In Santa Rosa, CA, Charles M. Schulz's Redwood Empire Ice Arena opened.

1974 - The last Americans were evacuated from Saigon.

1977 - Christopher Boyce was convicted of selling U.S. secrets.

1985 - The largest sand castle in the world was completed near St. Petersburg, FL. It was four stories tall.

1988 - In Maui, HI, one flight attendant was killed when the fuselage of a Boeing 737 ripped open in mid-flight.

1989 - Mobil announced that they were divesting from South Africa because congressional restrictions were too costly.

1992 - The U.S. Agriculture Department unveiled a pyramid-shaped recommended-diet chart.

1994 - Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had given U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, plead guilty to espionage and tax evasion. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

1996 - U.S. President Clinton gave a 4 1/2 hour videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners.

1997 - A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons took effect. Russia and other countries such as Iraq and North Korea did not sign.

1999 - The U.S. House of Representatives rejected (on a tie vote of 213-213) a measure expressing supprot for NATO's five-week-old air campaign in Yugoslavia. The House also voted to limit the president's authority to use ground forces in Yugoslavia.

2000 - Jay Leno received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2001 - A Russian rocket launched from Central Asia with the first space tourist aboard. The crew consisted of California businessman Dennis Tito and two cosmonauts. The destination was the international space station.

Current Birthdays


Penelope Cruz turns 35 years old today.

83 Harper Lee
Author ("To Kill a Mockingbird")


79 James A. Baker III
Former secretary of state


68 Ann-Margret
Singer, actress


61 Marcia Strassman
Actress ("Welcome Back, Kotter")


60 Paul Guilfoyle
Actor ("CSI")


59 Jay Leno
Talk show host ("The Tonight Show")


57 Chuck Leavell
Rock musician


56 Kim Gordon
Rock musician (Sonic Youth)


56 Mary McDonnell
Actress


45 Barry Larkin
Baseball player


43 John Daly
Golfer


43 Too Short
Rapper


38 Simbi Khali
Actress ("3rd Rock from the Sun")


38 Bridget Moynahan
Actress


38 Chris Young
Actor


36 Jorge Garcia
Actor ("Lost")


36 Big Gipp
Rapper


36 Elisabeth Rohm
Actress ("Law and Order")


31 Nate Richert
Actor ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch")


28 Jessica Alba
Actress ("Dark Angel")


18 Aleisha Allen
Actress

Historic Birthdays


Lionel Barrymore

4/28/1878 - 11/15/1954
American stage and screen character actor

73 James Monroe
4/28/1758 - 7/4/1831
5th president of the United States (1817-25)


47 Marie-Joseph Chenier
4/28/1764 - 1/10/1811
French poet, dramatist, politician and revolutionary


75 Tobias Asser
4/28/1838 - 7/29/1913
Dutch jurist; won Nobel Prize for Peace (1911) for his role in The Hague treaties


58 Erich Salomon
4/28/1886 - 7/7/1944
German photographer; a founder of photojournalism


77 Johan Borgen
4/28/1902 - 10/16/1979
Norwegian novelist, dramatist, essayist and short-story writer


77 Bart Jan Bok
4/28/1906 - 8/7/1983
Dutch-born American astronomer; expert on the Milky Way


72 Kurt Godel
4/28/1906 - 1/14/1978
Austrian-born American mathematician and logician


77 Ferruccio Lamborghini
4/28/1916 - 2/20/1993
Italian car manufacturer


53 Carolyn Jones
4/28/1930 - 8/3/1983
American motion-picture, television and stage actress

 

[minidog]

1289 - Qala'un, the Sultan of Egypt, captured Tripoli.

1429 - Joan of Arc lead Orleans, France, to victory over Britain.

1661 - The Chinese Ming dynasty occupied Taiwan.

1672 - King Louis XIV of France invaded the Netherlands.

1813 - Rubber was patented by J.F. Hummel.

1852 - The first edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus was published.

1856 - A peace treaty was signed between England and Russia.

1858 - Austrian troops invaded Piedmont.

1861 - The Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding from Union.

1862 - New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War.

1864 - Theta Xi was founded in Troy, New York.

1879 - In Cleveland, OH, electric arc lights were used for the first time.

1913 - Gideon Sundback patented an all-purpose zipper.

1916 - Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities in Dublin.

1918 - Germany's Western Front offensive ended in World War I.

1924 - An open revolt broke out in Santa Clara, Cuba.

1927 - Construction of the Spirit of St. Louis was completed for Lindbergh.

1941 - The Boston Bees agreed to change their name to the Braves.

1945 - The German Army in Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

1945 - In a bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were married. Hitler designated Admiral Karl Doenitz his successor.

1945 - The Nazi death camp, Dachau, was liberated.

1946 - Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders were indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.

1952 - IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Jr., informed his company's stockholders that IBM was building "the most advanced, most flexible high-speed computer in the world." The computer was unveiled April 7, 1953, as the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine.

1954 - Ernest Borgnine made his network television debut in "Night Visitor" on NBC-TV.

1961 - ABC’s "Wide World of Sports" premiered.

1974 - Phil Donahue’s TV show, "Donahue" moved to Chicago, IL.

1974 - U.S. President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of secretly made White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal.

1975 - The U.S. embassy in Vietnam was evacuated as North Vietnamese forces fought their way into Saigon.

1981 - Steve Carlton, of the Philadelphia Phillies, became the first left-handed pitcher in the major leagues to get 3,000 career strikeouts.

1984 - In California, the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor went online after a long delay due to protests.

1985 - Billy Martin was brought back, for the fourth time, to the position of manager for the New York Yankees.

1986 - Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox set a major-league baseball record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariner batters.

1988 - The Baltimore Orioles set a new major league baseball record by losing their first 21 games of the season.

1988 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev promised more religious freedom.

1990 - The destruction of the Berlin Wall began.

1992 - Exxon executive Sidney Reso was kidnapped outside his Morris Township, NJ, home by Arthur Seale. Seale was a former Exxon security official. Reso died while in captivity.

1992 - Rioting began after a jury decision to acquit four Los Angeles policemen in the Rodney King beating trial. 54 people were killed in 3 days.

1994 - Israel and the PLO signed an agreement in Paris which granted Palestinians broad authority to set taxes, control trade and regulate banks under self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1996 - Former CIA Director William Colby was missing and presumed drowned after an apparent boating accident in Maryland. Colby's body was later recovered.

1997 - Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and was dishonorably discharged.

1997 - Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.

1998 - The U.S., Canada and Mexico end tariffs on $1 billion in NAFTA trade.

1998 - Brazil announced a plan to protect a large area of Amazon forest. The area was about the size of Colorado.

2002 - Kelsey Grammer and his production company, Grammnet Inc., were ordered to pay more than $2 million in unpaid commissions to his former talent agency.

2003 - Mr. T (Laurence Tureaud) filed a lawsuit against Best Buy Co. Inc., that claimed the store did not have permission to use his likeness in a print ad.


Current Birthdays


Uma Thurman turns 39 years old today.


92 Celeste Holm
Actress


81 Carl Gardner
R&B singer (The Coasters)


76 Keith Baxter
Actor


76 Rod McKuen
Poet


75 Luis Aparicio
Baseball Hall of Famer


75 Otis Rush
Blues musician


73 Zubin Mehta
Conductor


66 Duane Allen
Country singer (The Oak Ridge Boys)


62 Tommy James
Singer (The Shondells)


59 Phillip Noyce
Director


59 Debbie Stabenow
U.S. senator, D-Mich.


59 Wayne Secrest
Country musician (Confederate Railroad)


55 Jerry Seinfeld
Actor, comedian ("Seinfeld")


54 Leslie Jordan
Actor


54 Kate Mulgrew
Actress ("Star Trek: Voyager")


52 Daniel Day-Lewis
Actor


51 Michelle Pfeiffer
Actress


51 Eve Plumb
Actress ("The Brady Bunch")


49 Phil King
Rock musician


46 Stephanie Bentley
Country singer


45 Melody Barnes
Head of White House Domestic Policy Council


41 Carnie Wilson
Singer (Wilson Phillips)


39 Andre Agassi
Tennis player


39 Master P
Rapper


37 James Bonamy
Country singer


37 Erica Campbell
Gospel singer


36 Mike Hogan
Rock musician (The Cranberries)


31 Tyler Labine
Actor ("Reaper")


26 Tommie Harris
Football player


24 Zane Carney
Actor

Historic Birthdays


Hirohito

4/29/1901 - 1/7/1989
Japanese emperor ( 1926-89 )

62 Oliver Ellsworth
4/29/1745 - 11/26/1807
American senator, jurist and chief author of the Judiciary Act of 1789


63 Alexander II
4/29/1818 - 3/13/1881
Russian emperor (1855-81); emancipated the serfs in 1861


58 Henri Poincare
4/29/1854 - 7/17/1912
French mathematician, theoretical astronomer and scientific philosopher


88 William Randolph Hearst
4/29/1863 - 8/14/1951
American newspaper publisher


82 Sir Thomas Beecham
4/29/1879 - 3/8/1961
English conductor and impresario


88 Harold Urey
4/29/1893 - 1/5/1981
American Nobel-Prize winning chemist (1934); helped develop the atom bomb


72 Sir Malcolm Sargent
4/29/1895 - 10/3/1967
English orchestra conductor


75 Duke Ellington
4/29/1899 - 5/24/1974
American composer, bandleader and pianist; a founder of big-band jazz


90 Fred Zinnemann
4/29/1907 - 3/14/1997
Austrian-born American motion-picture director


72 George Allen
4/29/1918 - 12/31/1990
American professional football coach

 

[marquis2]

Sir Thomas Beecham once said to a lady cello player "Madam, you have God's gift between your legs and all you do is scratch it"

 

[minidog]

0030 - Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

0313 - Licinius unified the whole of the eastern empire under his own rule.

1250 - King Louis IX of France was ransomed for one million dollars.

1527 - Henry VIII and King Francis of France signed the treaty of Westminster.

1563 - All Jews were expelled from France by order of Charles VI.

1725 - Spain withdrew from Quadruple Alliance.

1789 - George Washington took office as first elected U.S. president.

1803 - The U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million.

1812 - Louisiana admitted as the 18th U.S. state.

1849 - The republican patriot and guerrilla leader Giuseppe Garabaldi repulsed a French attack on Rome.

1864 - Work began on the Dams along the Red River. The work would allow Union General Nathaniel Banks' troops to sail over the rapids above Alexandria, Louisiana.

1889 - George Washington's inauguration became the first U.S. national holiday.

1900 - Hawaii was organized as an official U.S. territory.

1900 - Casey Jones was killed while trying to save the runaway train "Cannonball Express."

1930 - The Soviet Union proposed a military alliance with France and Great Britain.

1939 - The first railroad car equipped with fluorescent lights was put into service. The train car was known as the "General Pershing Zephyr."

1939 - Lou Gehrig played his last game with the New York Yankees.

1940 - Belle Martell was licensed in California by state boxing officials. She was the first American woman, prizefight referee.

1943 - The British submarine HMS Seraph dropped 'the man who never was,' a dead man the British planted with false invasion plans, into the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.

1945 - Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. They had been married for one day. One week later Germany surrendered unconditionally.

1945 - Arthur Godfrey began his CBS radio morning show "Arthur Godfrey Time." It ran until this day in 1972.

1947 - The name of Boulder Dam, in Nevada, was changed back to Hoover Dam.

1948 - The Organization of American States held its first meeting in Bogota, Colombia.

1953 - The British West Indian colonies agreed on the formation of the British Caribbean Federation that would eventually become a self-governing unit in the British Commonwealth.

1964 - The FCC ruled that all TV receivers should be equipped to receive both VHF and UHF channels.

1968 - U.S. Marines attacked a division of North Vietnamese in the village of Dai Do.

1970 - U.S. troops invaded Cambodia to disrupt North Vietnamese Army base areas. The announcement by U.S. President Nixon led to widespread protests.

1972 - The North Vietnamese launched an invasion of the South.

1973 - U.S. President Nixon announced resignation of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and other top aides.

1975 - Communists North Vietnamese troops entered the Independence Palace of South Vietnam in Saigon. 11 Marines lifted off of the U.S. Embassy were the last soldiers to evacuate.

1980 - Terrorists seized the Iranian Embassy in London.

1984 - U.S. President Reagan signed cultural and scientific agreements with China. He also signed a tax accord that would make it easier for American companies to operate in China.

1991 - An estimated 125,000 people were killed in a cyclone that hit Bangladesh.

1993 - Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a tennis match in Hamburg, Germany. The man called himself a fan of second- ranked Steffi Graf. He was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and received a suspended sentence.

1997 - ABC aired the "coming out" episode of the sitcom "Ellen." The title character, played by Ellen DeGeneres, admitted she was a lesbian.

1998 - NATO was expanded to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The three nations were formally admitted the following April at NATO's 50th anniversary summit.

1998 - United and Delta airlines announced their alliance that would give them control of 1/3 of all U.S. passenger seats.

1998 - In the U.S., Federal regulators fined a contractor $2.25 million for improper handling of oxygen canisters on ValuJet that crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1996.

2001 - Chandra Levy was last seen in Washington, DC. Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park on May 22, 2002. California Congressman Gary Condit was questioned in the case due to his relationship with Levy.

2002 - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was overwhelmingly approved for another five years as president.


Current Birthdays


Kirsten Dunst turns 27 years old today.


83 Cloris Leachman
Actress ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Phyllis")


76 Willie Nelson
Country singer


71 Gary Collins
Talk show host


69 Burt Young
Actor


66 Bobby Vee
Singer


65 Jill Clayburgh
Actress


61 Allan Arkush
Director


61 Perry King
Actor


56 Merrill Osmond
Singer (The Osmonds)


55 Jane Campion
Director ("The Piano")


50 Paul Gross
Actor


50 Stephen Harper
Prime minister of Canada


48 Isiah Thomas
Basketball Hall of Famer, New York Knicks coach


47 Robert Reynolds
Country musician (The Mavericks)


44 Adrian Pasdar
Actor ("Heroes")


42 Turbo B
Rapper (Snap)


40 Clark Vogeler
Rock musician


38 Chris "Choc" Dalyrimple
R&B singer (Soul for Real)


38 Chris Henderson
Rock musician (3 Doors Down)


38 Carolyn Dawn Johnson
Country singer


37 Lisa Dean Ryan
Actress


36 Akon
R&B singer


36 Jeff Timmons
R&B singer (98 Degrees)


34 Johnny Galecki
Actor ("The Big Bang Theory")


33 Cole Deggs
Country musician


27 Lloyd Banks
Rapper


25 Tyler Wilkinson
Country singer (The Wilkinsons)

Historic Birthdays


Theodore Schultz

4/30/1902 - 2/26/1998
American economist, Nobel Prize 1979

68 St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle
4/30/1651 - 4/7/1719
French philanthropist and founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools


87 David Thompson
4/30/1770 - 2/10/1857
English explorer and fur trader in western Canada and the United States


82 Eugen Bleuler
4/30/1857 - 7/15/1939
Swiss psychiatrist; pioneered study of schizophrenics


86 John Crowe Ransom
4/30/1888 - 7/4/1974
American poet and critic


53 Joachim von Ribbentrop
4/30/1893 - 10/16/1946
German foreign minister under the Nazi regime (1933-45)


84 Simon Kuznets
4/30/1901 - 7/8/1985
Russian-born American Nobel Prize-winning economist and statistician


82 Eve Arden
4/30/1908 - 11/12/1990
American radio and television actress


82 Vermont Royster
4/30/1914 - 7/22/1996
American journalist and editor of The Wall Street Journal


83 Robert Shaw
4/30/1916 - 1/25/1999
American choral and orchestra conductor


78 Franz Lehar
4/30/1870 - 10/24/1948
Hungarian composer; wrote "The Merry Widow"

 

[minidog]

0408 - Theodosius II succeeded to the throne of Constantinople.

1308 - King Albert was murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.

1486 - Christopher Columbus convinced Queen Isabella to fund an expedition to the West Indies.

1707 - England, Wales and Scotland were united to form Great Britain.

1751 - America’s first cricket tournament was held in New York City.

1805 - The state of Virginia passed a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.

1863 - In Virginia, the Battle of Chancellorsville began. General Robert E. Lee's forces began fighting with Union troops under General Joseph Hooker. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own soldiers in this battle. (May 1-4)

1867 - Reconstruction in the South began with black voter registration.

1877 - U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

1883 - William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) had his first Wild West Show.

1884 - The construction of the firt American 10-story building began in Chicago, IL.

1898 - The U.S. Navy under Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines.

1905 - In New York, radium was tested as a cure for cancer.

1912 - In London's Kensington Gardens, a statue of Peter Pan was erected.

1915 - A German submarine sank the U.S. ship Gulflight.

1922 - Charlie Robertson of the Chicago White Sox pitched a perfect no-hit, no-run game against the Detroit Tigers. The Sox won 3-0. Another perfect game did not come along until 46 years later.

1927 - Adolf Hitler held his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.

1931 - The Empire State Building in New York was dedicated and opened. It was 102 stories tall and was the tallest building in the world at the time.

1934 - The Philippine legislature accepted a U.S. proposal for independence.

1937 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.

1941 - "Citizen Kane," directed and starring Orson Welles, premiered in New York.

1944 - The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, made its first flight.

1945 - Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escaped from the Fuehrerbunker as the Red Army advanced on Berlin.

1945 - Admiral Karl Doenitz succeeded Hitler as leader of the Third Reich. This was one day after Hitler committed suicide.

1948 - The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed.

1950 - Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called Annie Allen.

1958 - James Van Allen reported that two radiation belts encircled Earth.

1960 - Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Powers was taken prisoner.

1961 - Fidel Castro announced there would be no more elections in Cuba.

1967 - Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president of Nicaragua.

1968 - In the second day of battle, U.S. Marines, with the support of naval fire, continue their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.

1969 - Leonard Tose bought the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles for $16,155,000.

1970 - Students at Kent State University riot in downtown Kent, OH, in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia.

1971 - The National Railroad Passenger Copr. (Amtrak) went into service. It was established by the U.S. Congress to run the nation's intercity railroads.

1986 - The Tass News Agency reported the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

1986 - Bill Elliott set a stock car speed record with his Ford Thunderbird in Talladega, AL. Elliott reached a speed of 212.229 mph.

1989 - Disney-MGM Studios opened.

1992 - On the third day of the Los Angeles riots resulting from the Rodney King beating trial. King appeared in public to appeal for calm, he asked, "Can we all get along?"

1998 - Arrow Air was fined $5 million for using spare parts that lacked federal approval in the U.S.

1999 - On Mount Everest, a group of U.S. mountain climbers discovered the body of George Mallory. Mallory had died in June of 1924 while trying to become the first person to reach the summit of Everest. At the time of the discovery it was unclear whether or not Mallory had actually reached the summit.

2000 - ABC aired the first celebrity "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

2000 - The "Barbie for President" doll was released in stores.

2001 - In Washington, DC, Chandra Levy disappeared. She was an intern at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. California Representative Gary Condit was named in the investigation. Her body was found on May 22, 2002 in Rock Creek Park.

Current Birthdays


Judy Collins turns 70 years old today.

84 Chuck Bednarik
Football Hall of Famer


84 Scott Carpenter
Former astronaut


80 Sonny James
Country singer


67 Stephen Macht
Actor


64 Rita Coolidge
Singer


63 Nick Fortuna
Rock musician (The Buckinghams)


60 Douglas Barr
Actor, director


58 Dann Florek
Actor ("Law and Order: SVU")


55 Ray Parker Jr.
R&B singer


47 Maia Morgenstern
Actress


44 Wayne Hancock
Country singer


43 Charlie Schlatter
Actor


42 Tim McGraw
Country singer


41 Johnny Colt
Rock musician (Train)


41 D'Arcy
Rock musician (Smashing Pumpkins)


40 Wes Anderson
Director


37 Julie Benz
Actress ("Dexter," "Angel")


37 Cory Morrow
Country singer


36 Curtis Martin
Football player


35 Tina Campbell
R&B singer (Mary Mary)


33 Darius McCrary
Actor

Historic Birthdays


Kate Smith

5/1/1907 - 6/17/1986
American radio and television singer

47 Joseph Addison
5/1/1672 - 6/17/1719
English essayist, poet and dramatist


56 Benjamin Latrobe
5/1/1764 - 9/3/1820
British-born American architect and civil engineer


83 Arthur Wellesley
5/1/1769 - 9/14/1852
English general; defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (1815)


48 Jose Alencar
5/1/1829 - 12/12/1877
Brazilian journalist, novelist and playwright


100 Mary Harris Jones
5/1/1830 - 11/30/1930
American labor organizer known as "Mother Jones"


87 Cecilia Beaux
5/1/1855 - 9/17/1942
American portrait painter


73 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
5/1/1881 - 4/10/1955
French philosopher and paleontologist


87 Mark Clark
5/1/1896 - 4/17/1984
American army general during World War II and the Korean War


93 Eugene Black
5/1/1898 - 2/20/1992
American financier; president of the World Bank (1949-62)


60 Winthrop Rockefeller
5/1/1912 - 2/22/1973
American philanthropist and governor of Arkansas (1967-71)


71 Terry Southern
5/1/1924 - 10/29/1995
American novelist and screenwriter

 

[minidog]

1519 - Leonardo da Vinci died.

1670 - The Hudson Bay Company was founded by England's King Charles II.

1776 - France and Spain agreed to donate arms to American rebels fighting the British.

1797 - A mutiny in the British navy spread from Spithead to the rest of the fleet.

1798 - The black General Toussaint L’ouverture forced British troops to agree to evacuate the port of Santo Domingo.

1808 - The citizens of Madrid rose up against Napoleon.

1813 - Napoleon defeated a Russian and Prussian army at Grossgorschen.

1853 - Franconi’s Hippodrome opened at Broadway and 23rd Street in New York City.

1863 - Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was wounded by his own men in the battle of Chancellorsville, VA. He died 8 days later.

1865 - U.S. President Andrew Johnson offered $100,000 reward for the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1885 - The Congo Free State was established by King Leopold II of Belgium.

1885 - "Good Housekeeping" was first published.

1887 - Hannibal W. Goodwin applied for a patent on celluloid photographic film. This is the film from which movies are shown.

1890 - The Oklahoma Territory was organized.

1902 - "A Trip To The Moon," the first science fiction film was released. It was created by magician George Melies.

1919 - The first U.S. air passenger service started.

1922 - WBAP-AM bean broadcasting in north Texas.

1926 - In India, Hindu women gained the right to seek elected office.

1926 - U.S. Marines landed in Nicaragua to put down a revolt and to protect U.S. interests. They did not depart until 1933.

1932 - Jack Benny's first radio show debuted on NBC Radio.

1933 - Hitler banned trade unions in Germany.

1939 - Lou Gehrig set a new major league baseball record when he played in his 2,130th game. The streak began on June 1, 1925.

1941 - Hostilities broke out between British forces in Iraq and that country’s pro-German faction.

1941 - The Federal Communications Commission agreed to let regular scheduling of TV broadcasts by commercial TV stations begin on July 1, 1941. This was the start of network television.

1945 - Russians took Berlin after 12 days of fierce house-to-house fighting. The Allies announced the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.

1946 - Prisoners revolted at California's Alcatraz prison.

1954 - Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals set a new major league record when he hit 5 home runs against the New York Giants.

1960 - Caryl Chessman was executed. He was a convicted sex offender and had become a best selling author while on death row.

1965 - The "Early Bird" satellite was used to transmit television pictures across the Atlantic.

1970 - Student anti-war protesters at Ohio's Kent State University burn down the campus ROTC building. The National Guard took control of the campus.

1974 - Former U.S. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew was disbarred by the Maryland Court of Appeals.

1974 - The filming of "Jaws" began in Martha's Vineyard, MA.

1982 - The British submarine HMS Conqueror sank Argentina's only cruiser, the General Belgrano during the Falkland Islands War. More than 350 people died.

1993 - At Washington's National Gallery of Art, an exhibit of 80 paintings from the collection of Dr. Albert C. Barnes opened.

1993 - Authorities said that they had recovered the remains of David Koresh from the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, TX.

1994 - Nelson Mandela claimed victory after South Africa's first democratic elections.

1999 - In Panama, Mireya Moscoso de Grubar, of the Armulfista Party, was elected president.

2002 - It was reported that Phyllis Diller had retired from touring.

Current Birthdays


Christine Baranski turns 57 years old today


85 Theodore Bikel
Actor


73 Engelbert Humperdinck
Singer


64 R.C. Bannon
Country singer


64 Bianca Jagger
Actress


63 Lesley Gore
Singer


63 David Suchet
Actor


61 Larry Gatlin
Country singer


59 Lou Gramm
Rock singer (Foreigner)


55 Angela Bofill
R&B singer


49 Steven Daldry
Director ("The Reader," "The Hours")


47 Elizabeth Berridge
Actress


47 Ty Herndon
Country singer


40 Todd Sucherman
Rock musician (Styx)


37 Dwayne Johnson
Actor, wrestler


34 David Beckham
Soccer player


32 Jenna Von Oy
Actress


26 Gaius Charles
Actor ("Friday Night Lights")


24 Lily Allen
Singer


24 Sarah Hughes
Figure skater


23 Jim Almgren
Rock musician (Carolina Liar)


19 Kay Panabaker
Actress

Benjamin Spock

5/2/1903 - 3/15/1998
American pediatrician; wrote influential child-rearing books


65 Alessandro Scarlatti
5/2/1660 - 10/24/1725
Italian composer


67 Catherine II
5/2/1729 - 11/17/1796
German-born empress of Russia (1762-96)


86 Henry Martyn Robert
5/2/1837 - 5/11/1923
American army officer; author of "Robert's Rules of Order"


72 Antonio Maura
5/2/1853 - 12/13/1925
Spanish statesman; prime minister five times between 1903 and 1922


44 Theodor Herzl
5/2/1860 - 7/3/1904
Hungarian journalist; first president of the World Zionist Organization


92 James F. Byrnes
5/2/1879 - 4/9/1972
American politician; secretary of state (1945-7)


30 Vernon Castle
5/2/1887 - 2/15/1918
English-born American dancer


25 Manfred Richthofen
5/2/1892 - 4/21/1918
German fighter pilot in World War I; known as the "Red Baron"


48 Lorenz Hart
5/2/1895 - 11/22/1943
American lyricist


73 Axel Springer
5/2/1912 - 9/22/1985
German publisher; Alex Springer Verlag AG publishing house


70 Satyajit Ray
5/2/1921 - 4/23/1992
Bengali motion-picture director, writer and illustrator